Strike Anywhere

After six or so years on Jade Tree Records, the Richmond, Virginia, melodic hardcore quintet Strike Anywhere — which formed in 1999 from the ashes of Inquisition — jumped ship to Fat Wreck Chords for 2006’s Dead FM, their third full-length. Makes sense, really, as SA’s primary influences (Avail, Sick of It All, Propaghandi, etc.) — both in terms of their speedy, crunchy, chanty, catchy attack and their unapologetically leftist political and social concerns — are now their labelmates. A lengthy hiatus prior to the recording of Dead FM seems to have recharged the fivesome nicely: The disc is their most passionate and uncompromising one yet, with front man Thomas Barnett shouting about our collective loss of rights, the death of the American dream, and, more personally, his own grandfather’s unsuspecting role in the Manhattan Project, with hardy conviction. Live, it should be nothing less than a call to arms.